


Undetected

by 221b_hound



Series: Unkissed [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Sally is learning, Sally's POV, no porn this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:31:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DI Lestrade insists Sally Donovan comes to Baker Street to take the statements about the Bigelow fire. Sally's thoughts on her new understanding of Holmes, Watson and their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undetected

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [那些未被觉察的](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223516) by [shawnordaisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shawnordaisy/pseuds/shawnordaisy)



> IF you want to get the references, you should go back and read Unnamed...

Donovan wasn’t sure why her DI insisted she join him on the visit to Baker Street, once he’d received his text from Doctor Watson on the afternoon of the Bigelow case. He’d joked about there being ‘strength in numbers’ and that made no sense at all. A plainclothes cop would have been more appropriate for the taking of statements.

Perhaps Lestrade was up to something else. Like trying to make them all get along. God. That was never going to work. Holmes had been kind of neutral and her and Anderson, to be fair, but it was obvious that Doctor Watson loathed her, despite the fact she’d been doing her best to make up for what she’d finally acknowledged were her mistakes.

And okay, she still didn’t much like Sherlock Holmes, but she’d lost the impulse to bait him with ‘Freak’. A year of going through those case files with a fine-toothed comb had taught her a new respect for his abilities. Faking those case results would have been several orders of magnitude harder than simply being a genuine (if genuinely aggravating) genius. She and Anderson had both been uncomfortably humbled by the extensive analysis.

Mrs Hudson let them in at the main door and promised she would be up soon with some afternoon tea, although she was emphatically and in no way anyone’s housekeeper. At the landing, Lestrade, contrary to all previous behaviour, knocked long and loud on the door of the flat and waited for the Doctor to yell  ‘Come in – it’s safe’ in a laughing tone.

Well, given the display in that ambulance, perhaps the knocking made perfect sense. It shouldn’t have surprised her, really. Everyone at the station had always said the detective and his doctor were shagging like bunnies. It was just that… well, there’d never been any actual _evidence_.

Sherlock Holmes’s frantic, tender attentions to his doctor after the fire were more than just a sign of shagging, though. They were the evidence of… of _love_. There. She said it. _Love_.  It was evidence of Sherlock Holmes in absolute, undeniable _love_ with John Watson, and Watson’s obvious reciprocation.

It was the evidence ofthat mutual devotion that had taken her so by surprise. Lust would have been less shocking; that seemed more in keeping with Holmes’s addict past. But that Sherlock Holmes could demonstrate genuine care and gentleness and adoration had never even occurred to her.

Maybe Holmes was right, and she was an idiot, blinkered by preconceptions and lack of imagination. But seriously. Who could have imagined _that_?

Inside 221B, Holmes sat at the table, peering through a microscope and making notes about what appeared to be identical samples of ash smeared on a series of glass slides. Doctor Watson waved Donovan and the DI to the sofa on his way to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Lestrade didn’t sit, instead eying the upholstery with suspicion.

Watson grinned at Lestrade’s discomfiture and then Holmes went and made it all worse by saying in an even tone: “We have not had sex on the living room furniture, Lestrade. It would be very uncomfortable and not at all good for John’s back. Additionally, you are not the only caller who does not knock.”

Lestrade wrinkled his nose at Holmes and sat. Donovan sat beside him and took out her notepad, ready to take the statements.

Mrs Hudson arrived and popped right in without knocking, just a cheery ‘Yoo-hoo!’ to announce herself.  She dithered into the kitchen with a cake tin full of cupcakes. Watson picked one up and waggled it at Holmes. “Cupcake!”

Holmes looked up from his microscope with a startled expression, then sort of scowled, then sort of grinned and went back to his work.

 _I don’t want to know_ , Donovan decided. Mrs Hudson dithered off again with a promise (or possibly a threat) to return later so they could tell her all about it. Watson then said _kaffeeklatsch_ in a conspiratorial manner and did that funny little giggle that some of Donovan’s colleagues said was so attractive. Donovan didn’t get that herself. Holmes seemed to get it, though, because that giggle made him smile and he murmured back: _rebellion_ , apparently so he could make Watson giggle all the harder.

On the way back from the kitchen with a tray of tea things and cakes, Watson stopped to put a mug and a cupcake next to Holmes. “There you go, sweetheart.”

Then Holmes did an unexpected thing. Not taking his eyes from his notebook, he tilted up his face to receive a kiss on the cheek. Watson seemed delighted to oblige, and his grin widened as Donovan distinctly heard the slight ‘smeck’ of Holmes’s puckered lips kissing the air.

Holmes apparently realised he’d been a bit absent minded. He turned his face to look up at Watson, and Donovan could see the detective’s whole profile soften with affection. “Thank you. _John_.”

Why the exchange was unexpected she couldn’t have said. She felt like she’d been let in on a secret, somehow.

Holmes turned to look at Lestrade over his shoulder. “I have written and signed a statement already.  John can give it to you. I’m busy.”

“That’s not how it’s done, Sherlock,” said Lestrade, but his tone was already filled with weary resignation.

“My report of the investigation and how the fire began will be absolutely precise, Greg, better than anything you could produce, and you know it,” countered Holmes, “And do have a cake; have two. Mrs Hudson is an excellent baker, and the diet is unnecessary. Molly Hooper already finds you very attractive. Gild the lily and she may feel that she needs to do the same for all her own flaws. That might set a precedent that will be impossible to maintain. For both of you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Molly!” Lestrade began to protest, then subsided into an embarrassed scowl.

“Just ask her out,” said Holmes impatiently, “We are all growing old waiting for you.” As he turned back to his microscope, Donovan caught him grinning.

Donovan frowned and stared at her notepad, resigned to being ignored in this whole conversation. Watson had given her a cup of tea and a frown, the bare minimum of civilities. No forgiveness from that quarter yet, then. Holmes simply ignored her, as he did now unless he had some professional business with her.

Yet there he was, _teasing_ the DI and sharing obscures jokes about his landlady with his boyfriend, and, for god’s sake, _having_ a boyfriend in the first place.

_They’re not just the DI and a landlady and a boyfriend, though, are they?_

Donovan tapped her pen against the paper as she realised this.

These people were not _just_ anything: John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Greg Lestrade. She knew the story now. They were the people for whom Sherlock Holmes had faked his death, to protect them. Molly Hooper was the one he had trusted to help him to disappear in order to keep them safe. Sherlock Holmes was eccentric, certainly, but he was not without heart. Psychopath or sociopath, neither was correct.

And John  Watson was the one for whom Sherlock Holmes had _changed_ , because there was no doubt that this Sherlock Holmes was not the man she’d met and at first admired then bitterly despised for so long.

Sally knew that she and Anderson remained largely unseen by Holmes. Dismissed as unimaginative and irrelevant. Deservedly, she now sometimes thought. She might as well be a ghost here, now, and it felt like a loss, the way Holmes and Watson’s eyes just slid right over her.

She hadn’t been wrong to be wary of Holmes, she knew. But she had missed things about him, then. About him, now, too. There was more going on under that arrogant exterior than she’d seen or understood, and that had only become more true on his miraculous return.

Doctor Watson sat on a chair opposite and as DI Lestrade began to ask questions, and Watson to answer them, Sergeant Donovan made notes and swore that she would pay closer attention in future.

She would learn to _see_.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Undetected [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6651817) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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